Originally Posted by
Seanz0rz
From my experience at work, it is actually pretty easy to create 2d DXFs for a laser or the like if you have a good understanding of how the part bends (if it is a bent part). If it is a flat part with no bends, then that DXF is no big deal.
If you have software that will calculate a flat pattern of a bent part, you need to know a couple of things. What die the job shop is going to use, and whether they are using air bending, coining, bottom bending, etc. This will determine the Inside Radius (IR) of the bend. This is used in calculating the neutral axis, which for this purpose, will be the length of the unbent part. There are a few ways to calculate flat part length, but if your CAD system is doing it for you, the easiest is to use the K factor. 0.45 is what we use at work after much calculation (.446 would be closer, but is inside our tolerances anyway) and seems to be pretty typical.
If you are using something like sketchup, creating a 2d dxf from a flat part shouldn't be too hard, but I am also not at all familiar with sketchup.